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Ch. 6: The Road Returns
Back to Arheled The mountain was silent. Deep hush lay over the earth. The lights of distant Winsted gleamed as if a net of orange stars had been cast from heaven and lay, missed of its’ target, sprawled across the land. A pale violet arrowhead cleft the black hills: the Little Pond, Tinda Dillüra. The Long Lake was concealed by the abrupt hump of the fell between the quiet place and Winsted. High and very near above burned the stars in a dull black sky, with the faintest hint of purple-blue; yet it was lighter than the utter black of the rounded hills. In the clear bitter air not a single star flickered or twinkled, and only their brightness revealed the Planets. The air was still and deeply cold; the mercury read 12°. The mountain was silent. Like a long wall it lay, running NE above the Tinda, sundering it from the Red Lake, Rugg Brook Reservoir on the north. Its’ somber pines stood hushed, masked in shadow and the grey gloom of starlight. The dreadful eeriness it bore at all other times was muted upon this holiest of nights, and only a solemn dignity lay about the clustered groves of robed hemlocks, a quiet repose like an ancient church. Lundnoem Harnda, the Silent Place, the Ronmond Wendtho Hill of the Road; the name it was most remembered by, it bore many titles, but tonight it waited. Temple Fell was silent. At ten minutes to eleven the quiet broke as crunching leaves and grass brittle with frost mingled with the snap of twigs trodden upon in the dark. Stumbling now and then, figures stiff with bundled-up wraps marched under the old pines. Flashlights flickered like awful roving eyes. One of the figures bent to examine a short slab leaning on a hickory: it had been blank save for moss, but now there were words graven deeply into it, curled and antique. “The Second Milestone.” murmered a woman’s old voice. “We must hurry if we are to set up before they come.” “What does it say?” a girl asked. “''The Rd, M. 0.1.” replied the woman. The large group tromped up the slow grassy slopes of the narrow ridgetop. They seemed to be growing every moment. “Can we really prevent the Road from returning?” asked another girl. “Yes,” a man’s tones, somehow both fatuous and awful, said in response. “It will be tricky. That is why we came on foot: anything else would rouse the guardians of this place, and tonight is their strength.” They passed the Second Altarstone, small and peaceful in its’ glade under the stars. Here one half of the group remained, while the others pressed on through the open mead under the sparse hickories to their destination: the First Altarstone, center of the powers that had rooted themselves on this mountain. Here for many hundred years blood had been spilled and sacrifice offered, to drive in a foothold upon the place of power. The witches poured into the grove. And as they spread out, advancing toward the stone, all at once they became aware of a black figure, standing motionless before the altar as if waiting. She made one step forward, and all the witches stopped dead. There was deep silence upon the crest of Temple Fell. In the violet sky the unwinking stars stared down, a cold blue-white. The black shapes of spired pines stood like robed and hooded monks around the grove, silent and somber. Pale against them stood the leaning stems of the hickories, themselves dark against the starladen sky, their wind-bitten fingers crooked and tormented, but still and quiet in the consecrated night. Pale and grey the altarstone sat in the middle, inert and powerless, the piled magic rocks scattered and spell-bereft atop it, the coral gone. In the deepness of the quiet the faint crinkling of the crushed frost-stiff grass straightening where it had been trod, could be heard. “What are ''you doing here?!” hissed the old woman’s voice. “This is the night divine, the silent night.” said the figure by the altar, girlish, soft and delicate of tone. “It is our night, Witch of Winchester.” “How dare you.” snarled the Witch. “We have claimed this place as ours, with four hundred years of blood and desecration, with black consecration to the One who Has Returned. How dare you walk onto our mountain as if it was your own?” “Because we have the prior claim.” the girl said. “The Road touched this land before Middle-earth was bent; ere the lands were snapped and stilled the Road had claimed this as its’ own.” “A pedant’s fobbery,” sneered the Witch. “You are new here, Moria, and you know little of our strength. We do not bow to empty formalities. We deal in cold facts. And the cold fact is that our magic stains this hill.” Moria gestured to the fallen slabs upon the altar. “A minor detail, and easily overcome.” she said. “Squatters can be evicted. I have evicted you. You have not been up here of late, in the cold, serene in your presumed conquest. Holy water lies on your stone. Prayers have driven out your power. Your carefully forged bonds to this place have been hewn apart by the Sword of Sorrow and the faith behind it.” She became visible all at once, in brown dress and grey coat, head bare to the iron cold and brown hair gleaming underneath with molten gold flowing from her face. In the serene countenance a white light shone. “This is Temple Fell.” Moria said. “Let all who enter enter well!” The witches howled, bending as before a blast of wind, and from the other altarstone could be heard the howls of the dragons. Though not a twig moved in the bitter air, their clothes flapped as in a gale, a wind of power thundering against them. Moria lifted her hand, and the thing that was in it burned too bright to see, and at the sight of it the witches screamed. First one, then another, lifted off the ground, the unseen wind tearing them off the earth they clung to. The Witch of Winchester stayed longest, taking step after staggering step forward, and beside her Cornello staggered onward also, flickering between man and dragon. The laurel wand glowered with a wavering black light. Moria said a single word. At the sound of the Holy Name born that night, the last contact between their feet and the ground was broken, and witch and dragon were cast hurtling through the skies. Moria lowered her hand. She still bore a serene, untouched smile on her young face. Light winked out. Power ceased. And grey night closed in again to reveal the glade was empty. Once more the mountain was silent. Far below in the light-netted valley, the faint ding of bells carried on the bitter air. It wanted still a few minutes to midnight when crunching of twigs and frozen grass sounded again beneath the silent pines. Lights gleamed in the greyness, coming from no flashlight. Dark shapes paced into the grove. Long cloaks swung from shoulders. Six people walked into the altarstone grove, their eyes lit like lamps, one red, one clear blue-white, one blue and one leaf-green, one grey-white and one a green like still water. They walked along the track of the faint path of the vanished road that traversed the Fell, which they could see even in the iron dark. At the Altarstone they waited, standing around it in a crescent. Midnight struck from the bells of the Five Churches. Though two miles and more divided them from the Silent Place, they rang incredibly clear, as if no distance could mar their peals and even on the far side of the earth they would be heard. Midnight struck, of Christmas Eve, of the Year of our Lord 2011 in the reckoning of the world, 2017 years after the birth of Our Lord in the true passage of years. The cold air stirred. The cold trees quivered, and rippled as if made of air themselves. Along the mountain ridge of Temple Fell the ripple dashed. Beneath their feet the very ground rippled. Something was cleaving into the matter of the mountain, gripping that one spot on the swift-rotating earth by its’ substance, gripping the matter of that mountain by the substance of stone and the substance of earth and ignoring the frail forms of its’ quaking accidentals. The rotation of the earth stilled and softly ceased, its’ entire surface held by the power now anchored in this one place. Directly south of them the glittering constellation of the Herald stalked the stars, now completely upright, his tilted bow aimed at the north, his thin sword projecting in a scimitar curve from his gleaming studded belt. From the arm that drew the bow projected a small curved buckler of smaller stars. From the corner of his belt hung a hazy mass, two stars and a galaxy forming the shape of a short and narrow horn. Across the stars from his feet Daslenga sparkled, the river of silver curving down through the sky. There gleamed Sirius, and the concealed Father of Dragons, and the fleeing Murzim star that marked the true West, now poised in the exact south of the world that was bent. The Road had returned. Under their feet, where the faint trace of an old way had been, there now a narrow track lay. The frozen grass overhung the square and ancient stones with which it was cobbled. Beside it the great pines had lined up, a row of tall priests in cowled robes unmoving in the night. The stones were unhidden by the grey gloom, but stood out distinct and undim in the pale grass. The Road had returned. The scattered rocks at the foot of the altarstone buried by the grass, nine of them, had formed into a single high slab, square-cornered and narrow like a gravestone, and words gleamed within the surface, wrought of inner fire that glowed out of the opaque rock in the curling runes of the Elves: “Ronnie,” said Travel, “what do they say?” The red eyes of Ronnie were clear as flames. His voice sounded like a mighty swelling chant in the silent forest. “I am the Road. Aulë wrought me. Ulmin poured me. Varda lit me. Manwë made me. I am the Road.” '' “Ulmin?” said Travel. “Who is he?” “With the other names, that would be Ulmo.” said Bell. “No,” said Ronnie, “Odin.” He looked up. So did the others. A shining figure of blue light was walking toward them, white rays sparkling about him. Strains of strange music sounded in unearthly haunting echoes from many directions; some bars of chants and carols they all knew were discernible at times amid the countless layered melodies, but most were utterly unfamiliar; had, perhaps, never been familiar to any living man. The six mighty children slowly sank to their knees. The being of blue paused before them. Wise and ancient were the gleaming features, and yet transparent, a mask, a shape, an appearance outward of he underneath. Warmth and kindness, strange sorrow and strange laughter radiated from him. “Welcome, you whom I have fathered, my six children into my image and likeness I have remade. Welcome in the name of the name of the Road.” “Whom art thou?” Ronnie said. Arheled smiled. “I am the Warden of the Road. I am the pathsman of the Valar, who watches the walls of the crystal of the world. I am Arheled.” “What art thou?” said Ronnie Wendy. “I am ''venda.” Arheled made answer. “I am no spirit, for matter is in me; but I am alone in the plan of the Father, of no other specie than mine own self alone. I walk the Road, and I steer the Road, and the Road obeys, though I compel it not. I am Arheled.” He lifted them up to their feet. “Come, you six that I have called. It is time once again for men to walk the Road, in this last age of the darkening world. “Start we here, at the Third Milestone. Walk we here, by blood and bone. Pond and Lake and Wood and Stream, Hill and Lane and Star and Light. Of the beginning you know. Of the bending you ken. Of the cleansing you were told. But the rebelling you have not yet seen.” To each of them it seemed as if they walked alone, as if their companions at both sides and the radiant blue figure of their divine father were mere ghosts, outlines one noticed or did not. Blue streamers of luminous cloud raced toward and past them, beneath their feet and past their legs. They trod upon an immense nothing, dark turbulent blue without a bottom. Wheels of whirling misty flame, white and pinkish-red, flashed overhead. Their feet rose and fell as slowly as if time itself had grown thick and viscous. Voices grew around them. Voices as eerie, chill and tingling as wind and sun, as ice and rain. “Bun zhúníz inglo tinglar lí ningo rongron…” '' '' “Sh’ar, szehú tí unglar zengnong ingar senglü, Arcturosár…sar ‘hyn a’ hyn, harn i nangna tí Arnga, Angar…” '' '' “Dar! Barfastû, inthís marfooton! Temra’úno morvos?” '' Forest’s eyes filled with light. Light made hard and moveless as solid rock, yet weighted by nothing, floored with empty air. Arches and palaces of hard light stood about him, spire on spire, peaked sharp arches leaping upward on every side with all the vicious energy of a Gothic unemcumbered with gravity or the memory of it. Many hues shimmered in the brilliant walls, along edges or trim or in angles of fashionings, but blue, white and silver predominated, along with the subtlest blendings of rose and browny-red. The Stars walked about him. Some were in what seemed to be their regular form, manlike save for the fluid elongations of limb and face, and the queer, hard, alien beauty of their features. All were bright, as if their flesh was of light or of luminous cotton; but the ''lendar '' were rougher of surface like cloth, while the ''lennar had surfaces that were as pure and smooth as satin or shiny silk. Some seemed to have a form of clothing, in luminous flowing or fluttering robes of faint contrasting hues, while others either wore garments as close of fit as gloves, or were naked; their shapes were so unhuman it was difficult to tell. Forest saw one of these latter distend her curving front until two shining breasts protruded and gleamed; and lendar zipped in from all sides like meteors, until the lenna was enclosed in a flashing maelstrom of male admirers stroking her satiny breasts. Clear tingling soft laughter and many jubilant voices bubbled to his ears, the universal note of salacity saturating them. It was fairly obvious who the males, the lendar, were as opposed to the females, the lennar: the lennar had an eerie, breathtaking beauty while the '' lendar'' exuded more fascination, more maleness: it was hard to describe, but extremely definite. He could not understand the speech; it was different from the powerful sonorous language Arheled made use of, being hard and tingling of sound, with many notes like ringing metal or bells. Quite suddenly meaning flashed into his ears, as one might catch a phrase in a nearby conversation in a room full of voices: he understood these particular speakers, though they still spoke the language of the Stars. “Charosa will not disclose the father.” The speaker was a lend of lofty stature and appearance, his robes being made of many flowing bands of long glowing blue, many soft merging shades. His queer alien but amazingly attractive face gave Forest an impression not only of age but of careworn, and the blue glow of his eyes was a worried light. “So let her hold to her darkening. It matters not, my friend. All of us hold things we deem dear but keep dim, so that only ours enjoy.” This star was garbed in a soft mauve robe, his glowing rough white figure stark against it. His features were broader and more…earthy, would have been the term Forest would have thought of them if he had seen them on a solid earth-dweller. The two stars stood in a chamber in a palace: floored with what seemed to be crystal, it was shot through and suffused with the palest and most delicate shades of lilac and rose as well as the overall strong blue of a noon sky. The arches of the vaults were sharp and high and narrow, soaring to swift points, their carved crystal edges pure milky white, their frames the pale blue of shadow upon snow. Columns of darker purple crystal with vertical bands of black rose to capitals of curling fountain-spray forms, a deep red and purple. The vaults were somber, a beautiful indigo-violet-maroon Forest had never seen before: he stared at the color, almost oblivious to the worried conversation of the two eternal beings pacing below him. Windows marched along the far wall, high sharp-pointed windows like spires; their frames were of blue metal deepening to violet, enclosing many curving panes like the patterns of a frost-flower, a large open pane in the center like a tall diamond. This alone was clear, the rest being stained in pure deep reds and vivid blues, and many softer hues Forest had not known glass could be stained, down to purple and violet and maroon. He saw no green, nor yellow, but silver gleamed everywhere, bordering the crystal carvings, forming strange and intricate patterns among the borders of the vaults, even what must have been inscriptions in some queer lettering as sharp and pointed as the arches. “Not perhaps to thee, close-shiner, nor to me, thou might say. But what the Sun and Moon make of it, may affect us all. Heard not how huge were the twins she birthed? She had to shape her joyhole to fit around them. No Star sired them, good Arnga.” said the careworn star, pausing at a window that gave out upon the celestial city below. Forest saw a great panorama of high soaring churchlike structures, but somehow far wilder and more eerie and tremendous than even the loftiest of Gothic steeples. They sparkled like snow caught in the sun, with ten thousand diamond spickles, roofed with sheetlike scales in many hues of violet and brilliant blue, and columns lined every door, and windows yawned in the strangest places. Balconies of wrought silver sprang from the crystal walls, trellised in dreadful rising curls like a fountain. “Earthbegotten are not unknown among our shinings, near-light. Why, myself can glow at when I wooed a stonemaiden; my form I had to make as hard as hers, or she would have bruised my joyheart beyond mend! And prick not out thee Mirzon and Myargna, who are half Man? Yet they shine well enough out East, my Lord Arcturus.” “I like it ill, this softening of every wall.” the first star said morosely. “When vend blends with vend, how soon before the bastard is a monster? How many earthwalkers beneath have our blood I care not to think. But I was there, friend. I saw the power in those twins. Their naming will be soon, unless the Moon recognises them not.” Forest’s foot touched the ground and lifted. He looked down in some surprise: he stood on a solid floor of stone, and the stone was rank with mold and slime. An abominable odor of urine and rot and mildew choked the dark air. The room’s very walls were damp with ooze, and white furry icicles of mildew covered the wood of the ironbound door. It was lit only by the person standing within it, a tall star with hair that, surprisingly, was black, and no light came from it, only a luster. His robes were black and grey, muting his glow so that face and hands alone gave light. Facing him was a lenna apparently naked, and shining only dimly. Her hair was utterly white. “Thou knowest no Star can break through a chamber sunk in the Earth.” the dark star said. “I have thee helpless. Now perhaps you, being after all young, may not have knowledge of me, and thought to defy me in ignorance. If that is so I can be reasonable.” The stargirl’s shape bulged, her bosom and hips becoming far shapelier and more prominent. A sweet, alluring smile softened her hauntingly lovely face. “I thought we might, my Lord Angar.” she purred. Men would have found her voice alluring; but Forest it merely annoyed. “Let me soften you…” She flattened on the floor, as if turned into a stain of white paint. Slowly her form thickened, peeling itself off the slimy flags, and behind it leaving a dense and horrid redness. She managed to assume her previous shape, but it was a ruin of itself, limply flopping against the walls. Angar was panting and his eyes burned with a queer and horrible lust. “My lord…” she whimpered. Angar’s face jerked. It folded suddenly into harsh, hideous lines, as if someone else was thrusting out of him. “Pain.” a voice came from him, rough and dreadful, grating as stone. “Sin. Sacrifice. You gave yourself to me…I will enjoy you.” '' The star shifted, springing and bouncing from wall to wall like a ray of light. Angar laughed, great monstrous laughter that shook the walls. The star’s orbits grew smaller; she slowed, spiralling in toward him. ''“I will breathe you in, and I will consummate you in utter union, indissoluble by death or power; we will be one forever, and that one will be I.” '' “Angar!” she screamed. '' “No,” ''the monster said as it absorbed her, '' “he is no longer Angar. I am him. I am Chaos.” '' Forest turned his head with an agonizing effort. Numb horror filled him. With apathy at first he stared at the scene he saw there; until it suddenly dawned on him he no longer stood in the dungeon of horror. He was in a vast assembly of Stars. Rows over rows of them stood on the air, standing above as well, standing beside buildings. In the center glowed Charosa; her naked shape was so tremendously lovely, and so full of wanton, provocative emanation, Forest interposed his hand between her and his eyes, her flaunted glory as painful to him as a stab. She was holding up two shining, squalling infants; at every squall light burst from their mouths, and power was in them. Charosa spoke, her rich gorgeous voice ringing through the crowd: '' “Artollo! Dîanna!” '' Even as the cheers and cries of the Stars resounded, Forest’s foot finished rising and fell in another step, and he left them behind. He found himself upon the water of a lake. Beauty danced and flickered all around him, wavering whips of light and flame of such loveliness that when he merely saw a glimpse of it a year ago it almost destroyed him. But now he stood among them as if sheathed in stone, the wonder and delight dancing outside him, himself unharmed: he was walking on the Road. Ancient firs and deep great writhen trees towered and crouched on every hand, their mighty limbs grey and soft in the frosty light that filled the air. The light came from below, for the skies were overcast with deep mauve and grey-purple clouds, and the eerie magic singing of the Stars echoed all around him. Upon the water the figures sparkled and sighed, and the grim firs and dark oaks gleamed with the luster of their glow, green-black and dreadful in the starlight. The sound of the stars rang and echoed around him, queer and tingling and solemn, a thousand stars singing each one a different tune, and yet each one blending out of instinct his own with the rest, so that a single wild weird melody soared and rumbled all around him; notes gripped his heart, notes like blue and silver blades, and he stood, entranced, sheathed in the Road. Forest looked down at his feet, curious as to what he stood on. Ripples played about his feet, though not wetting them; he stood in that which was, and could not alter it, nor could it alter him. Black water met his eyes, revealing nothing: it was night, and the sky above his head was thick with black clouds. While the skies were hidden, the stars came down and danced. Hills leaned close and above on both sides, and to the north there was a weird gleaming wall, reflecting the flashing lights of the dancing of the stars as if it was made of ice. But it was so high! It dwarfed the hills. Clouds shrouded its’ top. It might well have gone up forever. “Arcturoha.” a lovely voice nearby caught his ear. Forest turned and saw two more static shapes drifting on by him, one graceful and gorgeous with silver hair, the other a ''lend of such majesty and nobility Forest knew at once who he was: Arcturus, the strange sad lord of the court of the Stars. Forest heard Travel’s voice nearby gasp and exclaim, “That’s the pizzeria owner!” and Lara say severely, “No, that is Sophia.” Forest’s attention instantly riveted on the starmaiden. She was exactly like what he had fancied from the description Lara had given of her, as well as Hunter Light. She was young, he knew somehow; young and merry, while her lover was burdened with gloom. He had long stern features, the forehead wrinkled with worry and care; yet he was splendid of beauty. “Arcturoha, what dims thy face?” “Sophiala,” the great lord made answer, “how you can be so bright even as you dance under yonder shadow of doom is beyond my illuminating.” “Urwendí will dispel it, my lord. I do not fear the wall of ice.” “All the North save here lies crushed and ground beneath it.” he answered. “It reaches now even to the middle of the New Land, many hundred beams south of us. Only this one spot has the light of Urwendí kept warm enough that the Wall melts faster than it flows; yet so swift does it press that each year it grows closer.” “Illumine me, Arcturoha of the dim face. Why would Urwendí suffer it to gather at all?” “My lady the Sun is not the sole power on the Arda.” he said. “Something resists her. The Lord of Winter has been cast from his throne and walks the earth. And there are other powers as well, powers we cannot touch but only dree: for it is drawn from us. The North grew cold. However strong Urwendí shone the air would not warm. Snow would not melt. Snow fell constant. Summer came seldom. All rain was snow. As the wheelings built up so did the ice, until it began to flow; and though Urwendí shone her sharpest, some power is in the ice and it does not cease flowing, even when the land sinks beneath it. Soon it will consume this place, and spill the Long Lake, and we will have to dance on the warm lakes of the south.” “Faugh.” grimaced Sophia. “We do not shine well in warmth. For cold were we made.” “Yet warm water is pleasant in which to please to one another, Sophiala.” She gave a marvellous laugh. “Is that a shine upon me, my lord?” “It is what you make of it, Sophiala. You know how much I please to you.” “And you know my walls are ever soft to you, dear-light.” she said softly, and their forms wrapped around each other, and danced away upon the water. Two other voices came to his ears. Forest turned his head; or rather the scene around him turned as if he had, while his feet continued their slow and endless rise and fall. Two tall and gleaming figures stood upon the water, taller than the normal forms of any other Star, a man and a woman. Something about them seemed different from the stars dancing around them; they were more solid, and more powerful. The power in them beat on Forest’s face like heat from a fire. Both of them carried strange curved bows with evil points that shone queerly. As they passed the dancing stars split before them, bowing before reforming. At first Forest thought they were the King Silmo and the Queen Urwendí, for there was resemblance; but a closer look proved them not. Their words removed any further doubt. “Angar’s craft is exquisite, brother. Never have I seen such deadly purpose, such pure grace of deed, in any instrument. Were these arrows to strike, even one so powerful as our most precious grandparents would fall before them.” “Be wary, Dîanna.” the man replied. “Such words may be overheard. Thou knowest we are held in both honor and wariness among the court, being greater than any of the other sons of the '' Alarnplontông''.” “As long as our parentage remains locked inside my mother, Artollo, we are safe. Yet would I greatly desire to learn my father, to behold my sire. It is my only desire.” “I cannot enshrine how you can remain so free from pleasure, from even the desire of it. Do not your walls long to soften when you walk by a delicious lifted joyheart?” “You disgust me, brother.” Dîanna replied icily. “These people disgust me. So weak they are. A lenna has but to touch her rear and twitch, and every lend in sight will fall over themselves trying to get to her. The strength of virginity is unknown to them; and, brother, that is why I am stronger than any of them.” “I taste whatever walls are soft to me, and I suffer no dimunition of strength, my sister. Do not scorn them overmuch, lest they be stronger than you deem.” “You speak justly, brother, despite your grossness. That is why I walk by you alone among all this polluted people. A shadow lies upon them, a madness of softness. Angar alone is above it. He too, he told me, is virgin among these unvirgins.” “I fear Angar.” said Artollo. “I fear the strange laughter in his eyes. I fear the darkness of his words.” “Yet he alone, he tells me, possesses the secret of our siring. Others know of his knowing, but he speaks of it not. Only to me will he speak it, when he deems the time right.” “And not to me, thine own brother?” “Ah, but you are lend. I am lenna. Even two virgins of unlike gender may find affection, and I think he bears me some.” She smiled. Artollo laughed and jostled her. “One of these days, my sister…” he teased. She pursed her lips and they moved on, and were gone in the crowd. A chamber enclosed Forest. At least, it must have had walls somewhere, but it was so filled with delicate devices and instruments that they were completely hidden. Clusters of spider-thin wire rotating and coiling endlessly among loops of glowing energy, implements of many different metals wrought and twisted into graceful forms and pulsing with blue, or red, or pale violet light; complicated shapes and webs of patterns of gleaming energy; silver stretched in overlapping curls that radiated power; all flashed and sparkled from a hundred shelves and alcoves. Jewels and crystals pulsed with queer lights in vials of flame. Beakers and goblets of wonderfully twisted glass flashed with glowing fluids. Tanks of metal cast in beautiful designs simmered over slow-rotating coils of blue power, and exotic and marvelous smells rose with the steam. Angar, the Dark Star, of the Nine Planets, straightened up as Dîanna entered. The virgin goddess was barely shining at all, her costume a severe huntress’s. Her gleaming gold hair swished about her cold proud face. Yet there was pleasure in her eyes as they rested on the Dark Prince; and he too seemed glad to see her. “Dîanna!” he greeted. “Even my dimness brightens at your approach.” “Angar.” she said, almost tenderly. They placed hands on each other’s shoulders and then dropped them. “I had need of clean company.” “It troubles you?” “It is as though I am the only one with eyes among all the hosts of heaven.” she answered. “Let us go where we can talk at length, my child. It is crowded among the forms and the essences I work upon, and it is difficult to speak without breathing essence, and essence may corrupt the formative ether.” said Angar. They passed out a tall sharply-arched door, with carvings of oblong globes in chains forming patterns up the frames, but instead of snowy milk, they were of obsidian, gleaming and black and faintly transparent. The door was of black metal, the sharp sweeps of the inlayings pure silver brilliant against the blackness, and the knob was wrought and fashioned like a frost-flower taken on dimensional roundness. He led her up a twisting flight of narrow and beautiful steps in a multiarched passage, each arch rising from each step, the sharp narrow vaults a gleaming black, the edges of the groins a frosty blue-white, and from them snowflake-patterns spread a little way into the black vaults. They came out into a lofty room, with pillars wrought like severe and stony trees rising in sharp and sudden sweeps of bole along the sides, but spreading out in networks of ribs. The trees were black, and the vaults were black fading into maroon, and the ribs were purple fading into rose. Severe statues stood in ranks down the hall, grim figures in strange sharp-fashioned armour, hands resting on terrible implements, their features frowning and stern. Eyes of black jewels gazed coldly down upon the two stars. They were fashioned of deep blue crystal, fading to black in every hollow, like nighttime ice. “I am but one thousand wheels of age, a mere child among them.” said the woman. “The Sun and Moon are troubled too, but they do nothing, they tend their ships and seldom hold court. The North is held by grinding ice, and not even the Fell is free of it. The Road has not been able to breach it for a full Age. Arda wanders amid the Void, far from her destined plane, and the Warden is afraid. What will happen, Angar? Will we be smashed by some unseen cosmic force if we wander from our place?” Angar caressed her chin. In his strange eyes there was only concern and a distant sadness. “I have walked where have few others,” he said slowly, “and I know the Voids are not wholly so. I think what the Warden fears is that Arda may wander overclose to the Walls of the World. But they are so far distant that the fastest Star could fly an age ere he reached them. The Warden is old, and too accustomed to deep thought. The danger he fears is not the danger that looms.” “Then what is the danger, Angar?” Angar considered her for some time, and the statues considered her, also, the weird weapons in their hands hollow blue and edged with black. “Children vanish.” he whispered. “Maidens disappear. So many new Star-infants are born, little is noticed if they are seen no more. Even mothers, perhaps; every lenna is so soft in this Shadow they bear children almost every other month, and you know our children are wise almost from birth, unlike the helpless earthwalkers. But I see it; and those with eyes, like Arcturo and thyself, and even the Sun and Moon, see it. Even thy lusty brother sees it. Some evil stalks among us, maddening us, intent, we fear, upon consuming the host of heaven.” “What can we do? Thou knowest our curse. None of us dare fight, for fear of incurring it.” Angar smiled darkly. “So they speak aloud, to all save those they think they trust. No one dares to speak the hidden truth that everyone knows, for no one knows the others know it. To each it seems secret and held by himself alone. No one believes in the curse, Dîanna.” “But it is true,” she said earnestly, “it is no lie. I feel it inside me.” Angar laughed. So dark and bitter was the sound that she started back. Strange echoes murmered along the cruel edges of the sharp vaults over her head, and the statues themselves had a glint in their black eyes as if they too were laughing. Queer dark green gleams appeared in the hollows of the black boles. “The curse is not, as thy silly sires teach, a spiritual doom imposed by the Gods and enforced by the Gods. It is a doom wrought into our natures and wound into our power, triggered by commission of combat. And as it is a thing of nature, so it can be circumvented by nature.” “You surely deny not the Gemini twins? I saw their ruins, Angar. Ere the Sun and Moon were wrought, while Silmo and Urwendí were still tending the Two Trees, they defied the curse and attacked the Rider of the Darkness himself as he stalked south in search of the Spider. He never felt them, never knew they were there. As they laid into him their power backfired, exploded their hearts; they transformed into gas, into stones drifting about the airs until they fell as stars and smote the earth, to serve as ores of power for the forging of fell swords; and the Sun and Moon ordained the creation of a new constellation in their honor. None were so justified as them; yet the curse smote them down without regard for right or wrong.” “I deny them not. I am older than you, lenilli. I walked the heavens when the Sun and Moon were fresh in matrimony. I have seen the symbols of the 5th Arcade, and they it was that gave to me the key I needed. And I have discovered, not only the method of the curse, but the nature of it.” “What are you saying?” whispered Dîanna. Angar paused at a great window; the sharp arches were double-spired, a spire at each corner, like the edge of a shrine, and the frames were more severe in shape, wrought of black metal rising in vertical and harsh forms, and the glass was stained in hues of dark red and dark purple and deep blackish-blue. Seen through these the crystal city looked weird, diseased, as if under a shadow of lurid darkness that corrupted every color. “They walk in the heavens, and they comprehend them not; they are gods among creation, and they pay it no attention. So lofty is our race that the mere transport of our beauty as we sing from the heavens is enough to starstrike the hearts of hearing mortals; and yet were they to overhear our words or walk unstricken down our airy streets, so appalled would they be that they would despise us as beasts. How strange, that the highest should be lower than the slimeborn Men themselves with all their smallness, and that the savages in their skins are wiser than the Stars.” In the eerie light that filled the sad hall from the clear panes of the stained windows, Diana seemed wrought of snow and frost, her white marble flesh and her fair but severe features pale against the dark blues and black-greens of her costume. She pulled her dark red mantle closer about her. Her brilliant eyes, pale grey and silvery, stared, troubled, at her uncle as he turned from the window. Among the carven trees it seemed to Forest that they stood both in a wood and not, as if this crystal maiden was half earth as well as half heaven. “Come,” said Angar as he went back down the hall. “It is time, I deem, to display what I have darkened to you, and illumine the subject of my murmerings.” “Your words are dark and strange in my ears, fair uncle, and fill me with disquiet. What manner of light are you shedding this time?” Angar turned to his devices, cords of power lancing from his fingers as he manipulated them. “If a power is natural, nature can oppose it. All that is natural has a counter to it in nature. It is a mere task of isolating that counter, from isolating that effect I wish to counter.” He held up a dark beaker. Threads of scarlet fire twisted in its’ depths. “This is the essence of our curse. I distilled it from my own body and my own power. Once separate from me, I could study it.” He raised another flask, twisted into so many knots it defied the nature of glass. A net of threads of power encompassed it, and crystals were strung on the threads. It made a sweet but faintly deadly hum. The contents glowed a beautiful deep blue. “And this is the counter to it.” For a long time Dîanna gazed at the blue beaker, as at a treasure beyond price. “But, Angaroha,” she whispered, “have you an idea of what this means?” She did not see the slight twitch of mockery on Angar’s lips, but Forest did, and a cold fear crept into him. “The problem, my dear,” he said softly, “is that I am not the only one who has found this secret.” She gazed at him with wise and fearful eyes. “Whoever be the unseen evil among us, he too saw the symbol, and deduced as I did. For he is, I fear, far more cunning than I. Than any Star. Perhaps even than the noble spirits my sires were in their beginning. And he has spread the knowledge abroad.” The mockery was buried as if it had never been, and in his eyes there was only grave concern. “Everyone knows about this flask, Diannala. And, I fear, everyone has a similar flask concealed in their house.” “What does it do?” Angar pushed back a ruby hovering above the end of the flask. “You do not drink it. You enter it, until it soaks into you. I wanted to wait before I did it myself, Diannala. I wanted to do it with you.” “Must we enter alone, or together?” said Dîanna in a hard voice. “We may enter together, but there are conditions. Remember, this vial is not only for our bodies, but our power as well. There are ceremonies to do.” “Let us do them.” Angar nodded. “Doff then thy vesture, lovely Diana, and let us stand naked in the rays of the flask.” The clothing of Diana whisked off of her and fell on the floor. Her gleaming skin shed a soft light. She had changed her shape so that her private areas were concealed, and though graceful of figure she was no more exposed than a woman in a swimsuit. Angar dropped his robes, revealing a similar change in him. The flask hovered by itself, and the hum increased. The blue light coming from it meshed with the faint silvery glow of the flesh of the stars, and the eerie laboratory sparkled in strange black and purple shadows, and dark red lights flickered in the devices. “We must each be wrapped around the other until our hearts beat together.” murmered Angar. Diana looked both startled and pleased, and their limbs flowed slowly around each other, sliding along the other’s skin. Angar made no sound, and in his eyes was a cold sardonic light; but Diana gasped with pleasure, for she had never been touched, and Forest saw little gleams of power coming from Angar where his skin slid along hers: he was arousing her. Forest felt both entranced and slightly sickened: it was like watching a python eat. Soon their separate shapes were no longer discernible, for they had so flowed over and around each other that they formed one figure. “Now we must pour ourselves into the flask.” said Angar’s voice. “It is wonderful, is it not, Diannala?” “Oh, Angaroha!” They elongated, pouring in a single smooth stream through the air, funnelling into the flask. The blue fluid sparkled and boiled. The contents churned. Somehow Forest knew it was much later. The flask was empty and the hum had ceased. Two figures lay on the floor, dripping with blue water: they were both naked, and this time their parts were not hidden. Forest felt nothing from the sight, only a queer remoteness: the Road was protecting him. Angar slowly finished pulling himself out of Diana, leaving her limp and drugged with pleasure upon the floor. There was only a cold contempt, a sort of lofty disgust, in his eyes. When he spoke his lips did not move, and his voice was a shock: deep, grinding and rough, the voice of Chaos. '' “Thus even your virginity is rendered a sham, O mighty Diana, whose walls are hard as stone and who stands in her own strength. Thy heart may still be virgin, for I had to overpower her with pleasure. How I hate giving delight. But I will feed on her pain, on her torment; oh yes, she will suffer for daring to stay chaste.” '' He kicked her with one bare foot; she moaned with pleasure and flopped limply on her back. He rolled his eyes in disgust''. “Why the Foefather would pollute the pure Theme with such despicable delights, I cannot comprehend. I wanted a Music clean of life. I had such wonderful ideas. He countered me by poisoning the Music with pleasure; and now I, a spirit, must wriggle in the mud with the other swine.” '' A bolt of dark power came from one fist. Diana contorted, screaming with pain. Angar smiled hideously as his robes flew back upon him. “''Wake up,'' lenilli.'' It is time for the haughty princess to learn what a monster she really is.” Diana pulled herself to a seat, shivering, arms wrapped protectively around her. Tenderly Angar draped her hunting garb over her as she shapeshifted into it. His eyes shone now only with concern. “Are you all right?” he asked. “That was….did that happen? What was that?” “The purifying of your entire nature can be a…very ecstatic experience.” he replied. “I am told it is a height of pleasure reached only during love. Now I have felt it, I know it is more.” “I am grateful to you, Angaroha. Can it only be felt once?” “Only once.” he agreed. “But we can enjoy the shining on each other as often as we wish.” “We are virgin, Angaroha.” “Yet you love me, do you not, Dianala? I see it in the light your eyes bear when they rest on me. See it reflected in mine. I love thee also, lovely one.” “You are uncle, not cousin. Even in the madness of the Shadow, is not that forbidden?” Angar sighed. They stood, hands on each other’s shoulders, their heads resting brow to brow. “When I flowed around you, I felt your love. Do not deny it. There is not the consanguinity among the Stars as there is among humans; uncles have entered the walls of nieces, and nieces were soft to them. Of course the Sun and Moon frown on it, but in these days, when they cannot even restrain Charosa, can they stop us?” “Do not the children of incest of brother and sister, or son and mother, grow monstrous?” “We are neither. Our love is not forbidden, though perhaps not good; we can be virgin and still in love. It is as well. For it is not from incest that thy children may be poisoned.” “Then from what?” “It is because of whom thy father was.” “You have spoken darkly of my sire before, Angar. Perhaps you should cease to darken it longer.” “Perhaps.” he sighed. “For long I forbore, for thou art fair, and I love thee, but I can hold it from thee no longer.” There was only concerned pity in the Dark Star’s eyes. “I came upon them, for I was hunting my sister on an errand of summons. I saw him first, so big that as he writhed he knocked over trees; I saw her next, as big as he, and she was glad to be under him. “Thy father is a Frost-giant.” Cold night air struck Forest, deep with bitter frost. He breathed in sharply and looked up. The hemlocks of Temple Fell loomed around him, their dark green overlaid with the faint glow, and the Road shone a clear blue-white, and so did the ground, as if it was spreading. He and the others stood in a glade, and the Second Altarstone lay rounded and silvery on their right. Arheled turned to them. “Thus it began.” he said softly. They moved forward, and as they took their second step the Fell again faded from their sight. Someone was running in front of them. Forest saw her, faintly shining, dashing through the dense pine forest. She smashed into trees, and heeded them not. She was whipped by branches, and seemed to feel them not. Wild wailing was carried on the wind. All around the deep dark pines creaked and groaned with the cold air. Their ancient green, more black than pine-hued, glistened with frost; the night was far below zero. Frost furred every twig of the lower limbs, dark and dead in prickly beards of twigs that had expired from the oppressive shadow of the great canopies above them. The huge trees were knarled and writhen, so contorted and stooped as to be but half the height of normal trees; Forest knew instantly that they never grew, it was so cold here in the summer that they could only grow in centimeters and not even in inches. Soon it would be too cold for even these harsh trees to root, and their great dead stems would rise out of the ever-caking snow like bones. She burst out of the forest and stopped. A cliff, dirty, pale, gleaming thick blue and white from within, towered to the stars. Vast fissures split it, and a skin of dirt lay upon it, gathered in hollows and leaving bare large white patches; the edges of the fractures were dark brown and dirty yellow, like the blades of some jagged sword, though farther in were still greyish-white. Underneath it trees jutted, leaning and cracked, branches bending up as if stepped on, as if the cliff had crunched them up. As if it was moving. She smote the ice with her fist. Ice flew up in mist and splinters, raining around her. Great gouges of dirty yellow and stained blue and tarnished white appeared at the blasting force of her blows, and ice slivers filled the air around her in clouds of frost. Snow condensed upon the trees, snow and a prickly greyish-silver hoar. Still she beat mindlessly on the ice, her weeping both infantile and awful to behold. “Sister!” cried a tall beautiful man, white and gleaming, running up behind her. “At last I find you! Why do you lament?” “Why?” the woman sobbed, lifting a ravaged face to him. “I am betrayed! I am destroyed!” “How?” the man shouted, seizing her by the wrists. The moon shone, cold and sad, far above, seeming more than ever like a mighty silver face; and Forest observed at once it was not our moon, for it had no pocked craters or splotched meres, though marked it was and in much the same places: the battered hull of the Ship of the Moon. “Who? What has he done?” She collapsed against him, sobbing once more. ''“I am with child, Artollo!” “Indeed?” he drawled. “Is a sudden softening of thy walls such cause for lamentation?” “Thou art blind. Thou knowest nothing. '' I was virgin!'' Proud I walked among the madness, myself pure, myself unstained. Proud I walked, and pure I loved, mine own uncle Angar cursed. I thought him like me, unlike all others; my love returned, chaste were we. Then he took me into the flask. Pleasure engulfed me, a maid unknowing. And now I am with child, and the power I sense in him is the power of Angar!” “Pleasure?” frowned Artollo. “Why would that be? I too entered the flask. I felt only saturated, in power as in body.” She looked at him with growing fury. “It is worse than I feared, then!” she shrieked. “All his holy pledges, his chaste smiles, designed to have me, meant to enter me! I had thought perhaps he did so in weakness, in a moment of madness. Cursed be Angar! Angar cursed!” “But why are you so tormented, sister? Now you will be welcomed by all, will have our delights; you can enjoy yourself at last.” “I am not like them, brother. I am monster-blooded, and a monster moves in me. Angar told me who my father is.” “Who, then?” Diana shoved her face forward until it was almost close enough to bite, and she looked like she wanted to. “''A Frost-giant.” she hissed. '' “Do you ken that? A Star has laid with a Frost-giant!” From the dawning horror in Artollo’s eyes, it was clear the gravity of things had at last registered with him. “Why now?” he whispered. “Why not reveal it when I was first old enough to look after the lennar? Why wait near a thousand wheelings, when the babes that I have sired are in the number of legion? I would have made my seed sterile; every Star knows how to do that. You are big with one monster…I have fathered thousands.” “I am monster-blooded, monster-hearted.” lamented Diana. “I am born of Planet and Moon and Sun; the virgin goddess, virgin huntress. A sham my pride, my body mocks me; innocent I am, but in flesh guilty!” Artollo had left. Diana slumped against the ice wall. The storm of her weeping was exhausted. Far above her the iron cliff soared, a mile high, a mountain as huge as any that stand of stone. The chill rock of brittle crystal, so different in its’ polluted compaction and earthen distortion from the clear crystal of the houses of the stars, lay behind her, silent and ominous, a gathered menance that moved with inifestimable slowness forwards, a few inches a year, or a few feet sometimes. It lay there, silent and filled with power, a power that did nothing and a power that did not act, and yet which, in its’ iron silence, was more terrible than any blast of thunder. Slowly a colder purpose awoke in her eyes. She put both hands on her belly. Cloth flew aside, showing a swelling expanse of beautiful marbleine skin. Her gleaming white flesh drew back. A hole opened in her womb like a hideous mouth as she altered her shape. Reaching within she seized something. A cry of pain broke out of her. Blood spurted from the hole. Out came her hands, painted gory, and held in them a tiny infant, red and wrinkled and helpless. Red light burst in Diana’s eyes. Her grip tightened. The infant screamed. Blood burst up, flying in awful dark splashes upon the grim ice: the frozen face hissed at the heat, but did not melt, and the blue light cast the scarlet of life into a darkness of purple. Above her the trees drew in, leaning close, an awful eagerness in their motionless limbs and their featureless faces. Above her the moon shone, sad as silver tears, and the faint earthfreed singing of the crystal stars echoed dim and faint around her. Hate in her eyes, she smote the ground, blasting a hole. Into the pit she hurled her child, and with a sweep of her hand the dirt was returned. Back to Arheled